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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 5888097" data-attributes="member: 6688858">I've been thinking about modular XP for D&D Next. I think there are basically two ways to use XP:XP as REWARD, and XP as AWARD.XP as reward is when you give XP to players when something bad happens,  to reduce the sting. E.g. that battle turned out to be extra tough! -- Give extra  XP in compensation. If you're thinking of XP in this way, you'll  probably like the sound of making XP more and more accurately  reflect how difficult the battle actually was. Like calculating XP based  on the amount of damage sustained by the party. Another example is giving  XP whenever a character has to make a saving throw.XP as award is when you give XP to players when something good happens,  to recognize the achievement. You sneak around the  monsters -- full XP, for much less danger (so some XP is "free"). Or  giving XP when the players find gold & treasure, or accomplish a  goal or quest. It's hard to explain this as your character "learning"  anything. It's more like: the players have proved that their characters  are worth more XP. XP as award has less of a simulationist  cause-->effect feel to it than XP as reward.XP as reward cares more about the means than the end. It incentivizes a  particular approach to a problem or goal. Differing XP is given  depending on how much punishment you take on the way there. So if you  reward combat, you make it a more and more attractive approach to  solving problems. XP as award cares about the end more than the means.  It doesn't matter so much how you accomplish the goal. The XP recognizes  the achievement. If your approach has mitigated the amount of  punishment you've taken on the way there, all the better.XP as reward pays an hourly wage. XP as award pays on commission. In the  military, medals for being wounded in action are XP as reward. Promotions are XP  as award.Which do you think more accurately describes how you use XP in your  games? (A mixture is certainly possible) What should Next do?I think my preference is for most of XP to be in the form of awards. I don't want XP to be invisible. I want players to think about it, to watch their total tick closer and closer to level-up. I want it to drive play (hmm, or at least "point" play). I don't want to have to give players quests just  so they have some goal. The game should give them a goal by default. Then I can work off of this and maybe introduce complications that make pursuing this goal single-mindedly problematic.I think XP as reward works well as a supporting factor though. It  depends on what incentives and disincentives are interacting. If you have a  system where entering into deadly melee combat is not really  disincentivized that much in the first place (e.g. high encounter  balance expectation, attrition has little effect on future battles,  players make a new character at the same level if they die, etc.) and  combat is already incentivized (because it's fun!) then you don't really  need to reward it with XP. XP doesn't really do anything in this  situation and is likely to feel superfluous*. OTOH, if combat is  potentially highly damaging/costly, then you need to reward it with XP  if you don't want PCs to be tiptoeing cautiously around it.I don't necessarily want the players to be looking for combat, but I don't want them to be overcautious either. I do like to get my hack & slash on at times.  So I want combat to be rewarded, probably more than in AD&D where  monster XP is very small in comparison to the XP you get for finding  gold and magic items. Last night in my AD&D game the players found a  magical ring and brooch in a giant rat den worth 1000XP each. It feels  kind of silly to be calculating 9 or 10 XP for each rat (in fact I got the sense that the magic item XP value actually felt over-large). I like the fact  that most of the XP is goal-oriented, but I'd like a bit more  compensatory XP both to make them a little less cautious and for the  simulationist aspect of it (I would like to give XP for saving  throws made and damage sustained, if there were an easy way to do that).  Of course not enough to actually incentivize weird behavior like  prolonging combat to get hit more and more (I used to do this playing  the videogame Morrowind...).Basically I like combat XP to be largely compensatory XP (XP as reward)  on the way to something else providing XP as award. Although I do like  the idea of some monsters giving award XP (where hunting and killing the  monster is the goal). I perhaps could go for an explicit distinction  between two types of monsters based on this.One thing I don't much like is giving XP for different things depending on character or class. That's kind of anarchic, like different games are going on at the same time.So reward vs. award: which do you think describes most of the XP flying around in your games and what sort of XP module would support it?* People who don't use XP: is this why?</blockquote>

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